


All I Ask

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Bulimia, Cutting, Depression, Eating Disorders, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Self Harm, Self-Harm, Triggers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-30
Updated: 2012-07-30
Packaged: 2017-11-11 01:16:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis is beautiful and Harry so wonderful, and both of them are blind to these facts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Ask

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNING, if you haven't noticed already. There are detailed scenes of self-harm and depictions of eating disorders in this. Please, if you or someone you know struggle with either one of these, talk to them or encourage them to seek help.
> 
> comment or leave me a message/follow me on tumblr: themignonettes

He is so, so beautiful.

It’s all he is in Harry’s eyes: planes of golden skin and rippling muscles and blue, blue eyes that stare right into his soul.

Of course, it’s not what Louis sees. Louis sees too much skin and a big bum, rolls on his stomach that make him want to puke.

So he does.

It’s not all the time, though, he convinces himself. Only when he eats too much or feels his tummy press against the waistband of his trousers and that’s when he knows that it all needs to go and it needs to go _now_.

Sometimes the five of them eat together, like when the bus stops at a fast food restaurant. Louis can usually manage holding it in until everybody’s passing the time in their own ways. That or he just gets one of the packaged salads full of limp romaine and processed cheese. The other times, when they eat on their own, Louis hardly gets anything at all.

Under Harry’s eyes, he is beautiful even though his cheeks begin to hollow out and his hipbones look like they could cut through glass.

Harry notices that Louis is losing weight, yeah. Harry watches everything that Louis does and Louis glows when he notices the weighty gaze. But Harry shifts the blame to stress and long waking hours, because they’ve all honestly lost weight with the twenty-hour days and the constant rehearsals. And because it’s easier than, well, any other answer he can come up with.

So he doesn’t say anything.

There’s one day when Louis drinks with Liam, Zayn, and Niall and eats a full meal and it’s like it’s begging, pleading to come up. He excuses himself with a _gotta have a wee, probably gonna go to bed too, good night lads_ and they all cheerily wave him off. He smiles on a job well done for himself and a silent thank you to the boys for eating up the lie and unlocks his hotel room door.

Louis rids himself of his trousers, slings them over his bed, and conveniently doesn’t notice the significant lack of a Harry in their shared room. He makes his way over to the bathroom door, fingers twitching and the back of his throat aching for the burn of bile, and pushes the already-cracked open door.

Walks in on his lovely guardian angel, always watching, sitting on the porcelain tiles with a blade held delicately between his long fingers and red lines weaving across his arm.

Louis isn’t stupid, you know. He knows that flushing his half-digested dinner down the toilet isn’t healthy. But with a bleeding boy in front of him, he decides that his problem is not like Harry’s, not at all.

Harry looks up at his best friend with wide green eyes, the same ones that watch Louis when he leaves the room or curls up for a nap instead of a meal. He’s still holding the blade while he brings his knees up to his chest and tucks his chin over them. Louis shuffles over and plops down in front of him, sitting with his legs in a pretzel twist (the very kind he turned down from Paul earlier today), and gently pries the blade from Harry’s fingers, mindful of his own fingertips.

Wild green eyes follow his hands, and Harry asks, “What are you - where are you putting it?” with thinly-veiled panic in his voice.

Louis looks at him in the eye and says, “I’m going to leave it on the counter. What you do with it after I leave this bathroom is up to you.” 

Harry swallows. “And what about right now?”

The razor settles on the granite countertop with a tinny _clink!_ , and Louis regards Harry’s abstract art masterpiece that he’s made on his arm without an ounce of judgment in his eyes. “You and I,” he says, “we’re going to talk.”

Before Harry can say anything, Louis wets a hotel washcloth with warm water and makes Harry shuck his t-shirt to avoid staining anything extra. He expects to see the smooth expanse of his torso and muscles drawn taut and toned under Harry’s pale skin, the body he’s so envious of, and it is what he sees. But it’s not the only thing.

He gets an eyeful of faint pink scars crawling across Harry’s hips, inching below the elastic of his waistband. Louis sits back for a minute and lets his eyes explore Harry’s body, on the hunt for marks he couldn’t have noticed until he was this close.

There are little ridges lined up underneath his right bicep, little ghosts of scars. They’re faint, not unlike Harry’s memory of when he marked it up a long time ago. Louis reaches out and gingerly pushes down the waistband of Harry’s pants, and he doesn’t stop him. He just stretches out his legs and lets the elastic slip lower and lower down as Louis examines his skin.

Fresher lines hide underneath his pants and trousers, where there’s no chance that anybody will see them. Some of them run deeper, flaking rusty red at the edges and catching on the cotton as it slinks its way down.

Harry looks up at Louis, demure and desperate in his gaze. Louis responds with a quiet, “Do I even have to ask the question?”

Harry shakes his head and Louis takes his forearm in his hands, as if he’s made of fine china and can’t risk being broken, like Louis’ own thin bird bones. He pats at the lines running jagged with the warm washcloth, and Harry winces a bit. “So,” Louis says without looking up, “are you going to tell me why?”

“Why what?” Harry responds childishly, only because he’s not under the heavy gaze of Louis’ eyes.

“Why you cut yourself.”

All of a sudden, it sounds so very real and serious with the words hanging in the air like that. It catches Harry a little off-guard, and he has to stop for a moment to collect his thoughts that were thrown asunder.

Louis tosses the now-pink washcloth in the bin next to the toilet and folds his hands in his lap. Harry avoids the question still hanging in his ears and says, “Aren’t you going to bandage up my arm?” He holds his forearm with the opposite hand, the skin newly tender from the rough fabric of the cloth.

“It’s not bleeding anymore. Besides,” Louis says with a shrug, “there’s no point in hiding it anymore, at least in this room. It’s just you and me.” He gets up and pulls Harry to his feet with his unmarked arm. “Let’s relocate.”

They scrunch together onto one bed after deadlocking the door, close enough for Louis to lightly drag the pads of his fingers down the little lines on Harry’s skin and for Harry’s fingers to dance along the piano-key ribs that threaten to split Louis’ skin.

“You know that I’m going to make you talk, too,” Harry says, still eager to push the topic away from himself.

Louis purses his lips briefly and says, “Fair enough. You first, though.”

Harry drags both his hands across his face and sighs, wishing that he could simply telepathically tell Louis everything that cluttered up his mind. “It’s not so simple,” he says, eyes closed. “I can tell you that I don’t remember when I actually started cutting. What… what I do remember is that I’ve basically just never felt great about myself.” He hooks his arm around his face, covering his eyes.

Louis strokes a long line down Harry’s side. “Don’t I know that feeling,” he replies. Blunt, he thinks as soon as he’s said it. But at least it’s honest.

Harry peeks at him from behind his forearm for a second, eyebrows furrowed together. “And I don’t get that at all,” he says, and licks his lips before continuing. “But anyway. I don’t know. I don’t really know how to properly put down what’s going in my mind. It’s a big mess of tangled anythings up there, and it’s like. It’s like quicksand, I guess, is the best way to put it? I tried writing it down but I confused myself and ended up feeling pretty shit afterward, more than before. So when I do this,” he sticks out his arm across Louis’ stomach, “it’s like feeling what goes on in my head. It hurts, yeah, but it takes away the focus of the mess that’s up there.” He pauses for a second, then laughs, “It’s like a good wank. Clears everything up.”

Louis takes a moment to smile and laugh, because they both know that they need it a little. “You know if you feel like you need to…” he gestures to Harry’s arm, which lay limp still across his stomach, “you can talk to me.”

Harry turns his face into this pillow; Louis can see his Adam’s apple bob with a hard swallow. “Well. Now I know. But it’s not always that easy. It’s like it calls sometimes.”

The older boy laces his fingers into Harry’s curly hair, twirling it around his fingers and stroking it back from his face. “I guess it’s my turn now.” He can feel Harry nod into his pillow, and Harry turns to look at Louis inquiringly.

“S’not like I haven’t noticed, you know,” Harry says suddenly, stopping Louis before he can even start. “I know that you’d rather sleep than eat when we have the room to ourselves. And you’re always in the bathroom after we stop for burgers or something. That’s why you came in, right?”

Louis looks away for a moment when his eyes start stinging. Harry, caught in his own problems, still sounds so innocent talking about Louis’ lack of eating and vomiting. His throat feels tight and thick, so he just nods. Harry turns on his side and slips an arm around Louis, tracing the too-evident vertebrae sloping down his back.

After a while of just breathing and feeling Harry’s fingers caress his back, Louis starts to talk. “It’s just. Our appeal is like, in our appearance, right?” Harry nods, all too knowing. “Well, Liam’s always been fit, and Niall’s tiny already. So is Zayn. And then you suddenly grew half a foot and lost all your body fat, and I’m still stuck short and paunchy. You guys just look so much better than I do, and it gets to me,” he admits, then frowns for a second. “Wait. I’m not blaming you, though. You can’t help that the weight melted off of you.” Louis turns his head and searches the ceiling for an answer that isn’t hiding among the cracks in the plaster. “I’m just. I don’t know. I’m fat in comparison and I hate that.” He shrugs and tucks his head in between his pillow and Harry’s wandering hand.

“You have to eat, you know. Unlike me, you could pass out in public one day and it won’t be such a secret anymore,” Harry points out bluntly.

Louis ignores him and pulls Harry’s left arm down to press his lips against the uneven tears in his mottled skin. “And you can’t do this either,” he mumbles against Harry’s arm, pressing his forehead against it softly. “What if you go too deep? What if I walk in and you’re - not. Not breathing?”

He responds by pressing a hand flat against Louis’ jumper, molding it against his just barely concave stomach. “I could wake up next to you and you might not be breathing.”

“I’ll eat if you promise to try not to cut yourself,” Louis volunteers immediately. “I mean, I can’t promise that I’ll eat every single time I’m supposed to. I can’t. But I’ll try if you do.”

Harry tucks his head into the crook of Louis’ cool neck, says, “I’ll try.”

They can’t really ask much more of each other, because they’re honest. They do try.

There are days when Harry’s natural rasp disagrees with the high notes and he can’t stand the criticism, so he digs in with the blade that he did keep from the bathroom. Louis is there almost every time to clean the cuts and wipe away tears when Harry cries _I’m sorry I’m so sorry I shouldn’t have done it please don’t hate me like they do_ , and he’s there to press his lips against Harry’s hips to let him know that hating him is the last thing he wants to do, leaving purple blossoms of a different kind of hurt over the raised scars.

And there are days when the boys spend a day out on the beach when they’re in Australia and Harry can shed his shirt because he hasn’t cut for a while and the cameras are too far away to pick up any real incriminating evidence. Those days are good for Harry and Louis loves that, but seeing the other four in wetsuits for surfing and jumping shirtless in the water makes something ugly and ferocious twist deep in Louis’ stomach that’s started to fill out healthily again.

They get back to the hotel and Louis locks himself in the bathroom with Harry slumped against the other side of the door. He knows better than to pound on the door and demand to be let in while Louis retches and heaves and cries because he’s never going to be perfect the way he wants to be in his mind.

“You know, Louis,” Harry says after Louis’ painful-sounding sobs subside to a few hiccups on the other side of the door, “you’re so beautiful to me. You were when you had a normal tummy, and you were beautiful when I thought I was going to break you when I touched you. And you’re still beautiful now.”

He can hear shuffling on the other side of the door, so he hedges away and turns around, slumping against the other side of the wall. Louis cracks open the door to see Harry looking at him expectantly. He throws the door open and falls into Harry’s open arms, mumbling apologies into his chest.

Harry soothes him with lips pressed to the side of his head, his mouth barely brushing Louis’ ear. “You’re trying,” he says quietly. “That’s all we asked from each other, remember, to try? And you are.”


End file.
